I, and they, grow on the edge

This zine is mainly a story about the queer/sexual minority community in mainland China. The source of the story is an extremely simple impulse to write. I was moved by some precious attempts and sincere and gentle people.

My personal writing on sex and gender has always followed the flow of life circumstances. Those people appear naturally in my sight. When a new friend appeared in my life with her thoughts and experiences, it opened up another perspective for me to write about the Chinese ballroom community. And when the people I met in college were all intertwined, I stepped into a new river, a path, and an unnarrated place.

The protagonists of this story may only be a few separate individuals, but their stories are intertwined with each other, and there are also some figures of Chinese queer people. So this story is probably going to be quite long, and I'm not expecting everyone who opens it to finish it. This is not written for all readers, we all understand that it is written for some.

This article was originally published in a year-end planning topic of "Growing on the Edge". It took me nearly three months to complete this manuscript. The writing was carried out at the end of the epidemic, and the nationwide protests and the violence and panic faced. It is no longer a work of mine, but my life over a period of time, all my feelings and thoughts about life.

The two-year observation of the community also witnessed the flow and change of my personal identity. I care a lot about what names new friends want to be called and whether they have any needs for personal pronouns. I prefer to get to know them the way they want to be presented. In the past two years, I have gradually questioned my self-identity and sexual orientation, leaving heterosexuality and entering the wider non-binary lesbian world.

This article is written affectionately and sincerely because I can only record it truthfully. Many times I feel that I am not a very agreeable kind of writer and that I can only write clumsily and honestly. During the writing process, "Why do you think you can write about other people's practices?" and "Does the practice of communes need external introduction?" I discussed these topics back and forth with close friends dozens of times. It was also in this article that I realized that stance is the core. Who do you write for and why do you write? These things are the core of the humanities and social sciences.

The final notes of this article (readers can watch it after reading):

A few days before the manuscript was published, the Queer Commune stopped public activities in this name. Meng Sixie and Yue Yue in the article decided to leave Shanghai briefly to travel, and other friends also began to explore new possibilities in life practice. Due to my personal dissociation in life this year, I gradually no longer regard those seemingly confused and chaotic periods as "frustration". Instead, I prefer to view them as necessary turmoil and adventure in young life.

The queer community itself is fluid, which is normal, and represents endless possibilities that are unformed. There is not only one queer community in China, each community has its own unique appearance, and each stage also presents a different appearance. I would like to remind readers that my writing can only represent my personal perspective.

In the process of writing this article, I felt again and again that you are the most sincere and gentle people I have ever met. Shuangshuang enthusiastically encouraged me, helped me, and answered many of my questions when I raised my motivation for writing. The moon and Lao Meng also gathered their energy to talk to me late into the night.

I can say that they are indeed true idealists, and I still feel a kind of confidence in them. If I say that when I first met my friends from the Queer Commune two years ago, they were indeed more high-spirited, energetic, optimistic and enthusiastic, when I look at them again today, they are no longer the same as before. This kind of spirit is more realistic and fragile. They always feel as if they are holding the hand of death, but it does not weaken their determination to act at all. You know, even if you fail, the failed Nora is still Nora.

And when I look back at the world and think about violence, systemic violence is like a predetermined fate, permeating every corner of life. Sensitive people are always hurt first. Perhaps I am too pessimistic, so I often easily admit that this is the nature of part of the world.

But in the process of contacting the commune, I realized that maybe I just didn’t have the will or courage to fight against the violence of this collective, so I resigned myself to it. In this world that fucked us ten thousand times, I had already internalized a certain Such squeezed rules make it impossible to imagine a world without pollution.

In my opinion, friends in the commune are more "real" and care more. Words like "Utopia" and "Paradise" always seemed unreliable when we were growing up, as if they were only possible in hallucinations or fairy tales.

All pure things seem to be inevitably bruised when they fall back into this real world. I don’t know, just as we can’t imagine a society without patriarchy without misogyny, I can’t imagine a community without violence, a utopia without violence. However, it seems that we still have to fight, we still have to persist in our imagination, and we should still go down the road that may be nothingness.

I cannot help the many dejections of this era, nor can I say anything more confident. In the end, I may just say one sentence: I trust and trust the vitality of the edge.

This article is a "personal creative journey" prepared for participating in the "MattersZine first issue". The theme I chose is "Rose-Colored You"